Day 10: Another Day In Kyoto

For our second day in Kyoto, we visited a temple that had about a bagillion temple gates. Temple gates are basically a really large pi symbol that you walk through. Most temples have one or maybe a small handful spread out over the complex. This area had them lined up back to back for about a mile (a guesstimate).

Next we explored the Uji temple. The center building had pheonixes on the roof and a very large Budda statue inside. We didn’t go inside, but we saw pictures of the statue.

From here we walked to the Tale of Genji museum. Along the way we saw some birds that were caged up. I think a guy there was trying to tell us they used the birds for fishing, but I’m not quite sure how that works other than if the birds coughed the fish back up… Which is what the guy was mimicking. The guy also had a pet parrot in a pet carry case. It was pretty random. Anyway, the Tale of Genji is considered the first novel ever written. It was written by a Japanese woman a long time ago. It was a good museum. I’ll have to read the books sometime.
That night, we hopped on a train for our next destination, which is the place I am most looking forward to explore – Kumamoto.